Google Delivers Dog Food And Angry Birds Are Transformed: 5 Ads You Should Watch Right Now
Google drops off dog food, Angry Birds become Transformers and Selena Gomez has trouble choosing her footwear. Yep, it’s just another week in AdLand!
So which ads have caught fire on the web over the last seven days? Here are our five picks.
Enjoy!
5. Kahlua – The White Russian
Sitting firmly on the impressionistic side of alcohol advertising, Kahlua’s “The White Russian” takes an art house approach to selling tasty drinks. I’m tempted to compare the whole piece to a Coen Brothers’ film, not least because it features The Big Lebowski’s Jeff Bridges drinking his iconic milk-based cocktail.
A classic crime tale, down to its stolen money and mysterious pursuers, the spot features frenetic edits under Bridges’ gritty narration. At four minutes long, it’s quite an ask for an online ad, but the tale is surprisingly gripping (particularly with the magical realist arrival of a Russian Cosmonaut).
Never boring and surprisingly atmospheric, “The White Russian” certainly stands out in terms of ambition.
4. adidas – NEOrunway
If you’ve ever longed to have some kind of role in determining what Disney star Selena Gomez wears in public, then this is your lucky day. Finally democratising a process that’s been too long dominated by her personal taste, how will you decide whether Selena wears sneakers or pumps?
In keeping with adidas’ social media savvy NEO brand, the campaign lets users vote on their fashion choice by either favouriting or retweeting the ad. Besides being a very crafty marketing move, one can only imagine the elation at seeing Ms. Gomez actually wearing their vote of footwear. It’s civics in practice.
3. Rovio – Angry Birds Transformer Cinematic Trailer
If you thought Michael Bay’s increasingly incomprehensible series of films had drained any nostalgia from the Transformers franchise, then prepare to have your faith restored. Teasing Angry Birds’ latest collaboration with an established series, their ‘cinematic trailer’ is spot-on parody of the 1980s cartoon series.
Featuring the appropriate retro colour palette and solo-heavy soundtrack, the ad certainly brought me back to the dazzlingly-colourful, eardrum-busting shows of my childhood. We can only hope the game itself embodies the same knowingly-shoddy aesthetic. In any case, I’m just looking forward to see which children’s classic Angry Birds can take on next. If there’s any justice in the world, it’ll be The Moomins.
2. Snickers – Johnny JamBoogie
Snickers long ago established that people aren’t themselves when they’re hungry, and their recent ads work through every possible permutation of this formula. Their latest finds American Football player Johnny ‘Football’ Manziel transformed into gym trainer Johnny JamBoogie.
In a surprisingly adept comic turn from the Cleveland Browns quarterback, he barrels his way through some of your classic calisthenic moves. Eventually another apparently equally famous athlete enters with the curative Snickers and everything is back to normal. What the spot leaves me with mostly is this: is Johnny Football the laziest sporting nickname ever?
1. Google – Project Wing
Continuing Google’s wholesale domination of global research and development, the brand’s Project Wing aims to facilitate, in its words, “moving stuff more quickly”. A lofty ambition, matched by a futuristic drone design, which looks startlingly like the X-Men jet.
The prototype is essentially a small unmanned jet capable of delivering small packages, and in this teaser spot we see the plane dropping off dog food to a secluded outback farm.
Rising like a Harrier Jump Jet before soaring majestically through the clouds, I can’t help but feel they could have picked a slightly more glamorous product to use. In any case, expect to hear the auspicious rotors of the Wing flapping outside in the next few years, when you can’t be bothered to go buy milk.
